>>> Irregardless of the title of his book and his intent, Dehaene doesn't show> "number sense" in animals, he shows "quantitive sense". It would be as if I> said that animals and humans share the innate sense of speech because we> both are capable of making sounds. I opined then that this was a deliberate> slight of hand by Dehaene. Talk about something that would catch the> reader's attention (number sense), establish something else (quantitive> sense), continue on as if you had established the other (number sense). I> suppose that since this work is meant for popular appeal rather than> science, Dehaene can use any plot device he wishes.>>"Quantitive", or, the already existing word "quantitative" is fine with mefor what Dehaene calls "number". I think, though, that you're conflatingwhat Dehaene calls "number sense" with what is more commonly called "numbersense"---and the two are indeed different. And your use of the phrase in asense other than Dehaene's doesn't contradict his hypotheses. It simplypoints out that they're about something you refuse to deal with.

I think Dehaene makes a good *experimental* case for an innate quantitativesense, to use a phrase you prefer, in all higher animals and many lowerones. And the hypothesis that "mathy" kids are the ones who manage toconnect that innate sense with the algorithms of arithmetic, while onecause of non-mathiness is failure to do so, offers some explanation ofthings I've seen in the classroom.

There are kids who don't know when addition is appropriate or whenmultiplication is. That seems to me to be well explained by such a failureto connect. This is exactly what one would expect of a kid who learnsalgorithms because required to do so instead of as something connected tothe real world.

The issue then becomes one of devising *experiments* to follow up on thishypothesis---not, as you seem to think, offering rationalizations for notbelieving it. Most of those rationalizations can be easily defeated bynoting that humans have bigger, more versatile brains---which are capableof extending innate qualities in ways that animal brains aren't.

What couldn't be so defeated is evidence from well-defined experiments.

--Louis A. Talman Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences Metropolitan State College of Denver